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Viper 550 vs Velocity 4400

Can somebody point me to a link reviewing these two cards? I have decided to get one of these two cards, but I want a full comparison in terms of speed (the 4400 is appranrently faster, but by how much?), ease of installation and use, driver support from manufacturers (most importantly, when are the 3DNow drivers coming out, since I'll be sticking it into a K6-2 system) and so on.

Also, are there any more compatibility issues with Super7 boards? I'm pretty sure that they've all been worked out and fixed, but I want to make sure I buy the latest revision to avoid troubles.

Get the november issue of maximum pc magazine. It reviews both the velocity 4400 and the viper v550. The velocity 4400 got 9 out of 10 and the kick *** product award, edging out diamond. The diamond card was faster in some of the benchmarks (by fractions of frame rates), but most of them they scored about the same.
The velocity got the kick *** product award (the diamond viper also got 9 out of 10) due to better tv out and d3d/opengl control applets in their drivers.

I'm considering buying one of those two cards myself. I have read in some magazine that the Diamond has better refresh rates in 2D. Is this true ? It sounds strange since they both use the same chip and ramdac. I have also read that the stb is somewhat faster in 3d. Can anybody help ?

I think that the issue of speed is not very significant (from my own reading and collin's post). It comes down to features and customer support, and I have read that STB is much better in terms of supporting their card (and releasing updated drivers too!). The reason all speeds are very close is that nvidia produced a reference board and basically everybody followed it to the letter - very few bothered to do R&D and optimise the setup further.

Does maximum pc have a web page? I am not sure if it's sold here in Australia, I can't recall having seen it around.

Well, i have called STB tech support when i got my card to disable the onboard video.....she said no way would the STB Velocity 4400 work on my MB. Needless to say i was pissed and figured out how to disable my video thru the device mgr.
I have never called STB again cuz i dont need their lame techs anyhow; I do better on trial and error. Overall the STB VElocity 4400 is a killer card, I have never seen games look as good. I just ordered a 2nd Velocity 4400 a few min. ago.

Ps: Yes the diamond card has higher refresh rates than the velocity does, but that is due to drivers, not the ramdac. The 250mhz ramdac will support refresh rates to 200mhz, but currently, only canopus's riva tnt card the spectra 2500 has drivers that will run these refresh rates.

With todays cards ,you really want to go for the company with good driver updates, and helpful customer support. In a rush t oget to market , everyone really just releases reference boards, with some cool config tools. No one takes the time ot actually add to the product itself.

That is the reason I went to a canopus pure 3d video card. This card has 6mb of memory, when all other voodoo1 cards (with the exception of quantum3d's obsidian line) came out with only 4mb of memory. I really see the difference now, with games that support 4mb of texture memory. Also the pure 3d had tv out when no other one did. More recently, the canopus spectra 2500 has come out that has better tv-out controls and resolutions than any other tnt card. It also has reverse pass through to connect any voodoo1 or voodoo2 cards. It has a built on fan, uses sgram not sdram. They have clocked down the card to make it rock-solid stable, so the frame rates are a bit slower than the velocity 4400 or the viper v550. The card is also about 2/3 the size of the other riva tnt cards out there, making it a good choice for customers with baby at cases runing an agp board. This card was also the only card to ever get the boot magazine, now maximum pc magazine's 10 score and kick *** product award. The velocity got 9 and the kick *** product, but the spectra got 10. Look for the december issue of maximum pc magazine on your store shelves right now. This magazine is an excellent source of power-user hardware and software reviews.

Well.. I am a newbie to this board.. but I will be here a bit often.. seems the folks here have a good idea whats going on in general with the video card market.. only thing I can contribute here are a few horror stories about how lame diamond has been with their driver support.. my 2 cents.. take care all